Look at that, year one is done and we’re now well into year two. And thus it seems about time for me to explain what I’ve been working on. GET READY.
Two-sentence summer recap: Katie and I were trainers for the incoming group of volunteers. Then her parents came.
And then we got back to work at our site. So first, I should say that volunteers in the Community Economic Development sector here (and health, and youth development, the other non-TEFL* project sectors) tend to have less clearly-defined roles than English teachers do, when it comes to work at their host country agency (HCA). The good thing about that is that most non-TEFL volunteers have more control over what kind of work they end up doing, depending on how their interests and skills fit in with what their agency is looking for from a PCV. On the other hand, if you’re not an English teacher, it can take longer to figure out what your role should be at your HCA. You just don’t fit into daily work life as easily as a teacher at a school does.
All of this is meant to rationalize the fact that my progress in contributing to economic development in Mongolia has been…underwhelming. One of my goals in my remaining time is to improve member services at my HCA, the Chamber of Commerce. It’s challenging to organize quality services with our tiny staff. And I haven’t found much evidence that Mongolian businesspeople are interested in networking luncheons, which apparently is the type of thing American Chambers do. So we’ve got to figure some things out.
Most of my time at my HCA has consisted of working with my individual counterparts on their everyday tasks: teaching an Excel trick once in a while, helping to edit an English translation, advising them on how work responsibilities should be assigned. It’s taken me a while to come to grips with the fact my work situation is not quite right for the fabled Big Grant-Funded Project — but that’s not to say we won’t collaborate on bigger things over my last 10 months.
What else? I’ve got some worthwhile secondary work going on.
I started a website for the community English classes we do with the other PCVs here. We’ve been getting 20 or 30 participants each night lately.
Katie and I also recently started going to a local orphanage to play games and teach a little English to the kids there. Even though there is no sustainability/capacity building component to this (big Peace Corps concepts), it’s a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.
A bigger issue I’m trying to work on is promoting volunteerism, which is Peace Corps’ V2 initiative:
Multiplying the Power of Service
What if each Peace Corps Volunteer was the catalyst for 10 community volunteers who were committed to making their communities a better place?
What if those 10 new volunteers—men, women, boys, and girls—were, in turn, inspired to mobilize an additional number of people committed to giving back to their town or village through service?
Think of how your actions can spark a multiplying effect—an exponential increase in service—that creates long-term change in your community!
…which sounds great in theory but is pretty challenging to put into practice. One of the lessons you quickly learn as a PCV is that developing countries don’t have a lot of people with spare time for volunteering. I’ve got a couple inchoate ideas that I don’t want to jinx by talking about just yet. But hopefully there will be some positive developments in that realm that I can report here before another 5 months have gone by between blog posts.
*Teaching English as a foreign language.
